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2012 can easily be dubbed the year of TEDx for me, as by mid-February I had already attended two TEDx events! First up was TEDxSalford in late January, where I was just a mindblown attendee, and two weeks later it was TEDxManchester where I had the honour to be a speaker!

TEDxManchester took place on Monday 13th February this year at one of the iconic Manchester locations – and my “local” – the Cornerhouse. Among the luminary speakers were people I have always been admiring, such as the radio Goddess Mary Anne Hobbs, and people I have become very close friends with over the years – which has led me to an equal amount of admiration, such as Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden to most of us).

Here are their respective talks at TEDxManchester 2012 for you to get a taste of the atmosphere at the event and of the impact of the ideas and the immediacy of the sentiments circulated!

I spoke about the weird and wonderful world of Voice Recognition (“Voice Recognition FTW!”): from the inaccurate – and far too often funny – simple voice-to-text apps and dictation systems on your smartphones, to the most frustrating automated Call Centres, to the next generation, sophisticated SIRI and everything in-between. I explained why things go wrong and when things can go wonderfully right. The answer is “CONTEXT”; the more you have of it , the more accurate and relevant the interpretation of user intention will be, and the more relevant and impressive the system reaction / reply will be.

Infomorphs or a weaver… #TEDxMCR love the idea 🙂 very cool! They could work with #perceptivemedia yfrog.com/gzeg2jij
Retweeted by @ar3toul4ki
13 FebIan Pettigrew ‏ @KingfisherCoach

#TEDxMCR @skeuomorphology challenging ‘necessity is the mother of invention’; cars weren’t invented as a response to a shortage of horses!
Retweeted by @ar3toul4ki
13 FebLuke Robert Mason ‏ @LukeRobertMason

Pure information technologies are the first evolutionary aware technologies. They are stochastic… Emerge from randomness #TEDxMCR @weavrs
Retweeted by @ar3toul4ki
13 FebLuke Robert Mason ‏ @LukeRobertMason

Great, great talk by @brendandawes on the value of pursuing ideas, and the ideas they spawn, without necessarily knowing where you’re going
Retweeted by @ar3toul4ki
from Manchester, Manchester
13 Feb RichardMichie ‏ @RichardMichie

Failed art at school? You can still exhibit at #moma @brendandawes #tedxmcr great story love it
Retweeted by @ar3toul4ki
13 Feb @ar3toul4ki

@ar3toul4ki great talk Maria, speech recog in focus at the beeb right now, be interesting to talk once I’ve worked out what our landscape is
Retweeted by @ar3toul4ki
13 Feb TEDxManchester ‏ @TEDxManchester